The Legend of Virinara, page 6
‘I don’t know what else to say to him. I’ve tried everything. He’s decided that this course is the best way forward—for Virinara and for Vijay. He says her sacrifice will erase his shame and Vijay will soon forget her—that with this sacrifice, Greatmother Illara will bless these lands with more royal seed. And the Brahmans don’t contradict him.’
‘I won’t let it happen. I won’t let my own father make a fool of himself and all our sacred knowledge with his corrupted understanding of things,’ Narsimha declared, his face burning with righteousness. But when he looked at me, I saw something else in his eyes: A desperate longing. A terror of immeasurable loss. Love.
Bhikku Laxman sighed and sniffled as he etched Shanti’s words into the palm leaf upon his worn wooden board. Hearing these uncommon sounds from him, Shanti paused to study his face.
‘What is it, old friend?’ she asked.
He stopped writing and grew quiet. After a moment he said, ‘In some ways, it’s all too much. Too difficult. Love. Loyalty. Justice. To whom or what will we give allegiance?’ Shanti didn’t speak into his long silence, but waited for him to go on. ‘Even your own brother, Raja Vijay, he . . . at the moment he learned he’d lose you to your father’s madness . . .’ The monk cleared his throat, thick with emotion. ‘I realize he was only a boy, but . . . did he ever beg your forgiveness?’
‘We never spoke of it. It was one of those moments in life too cruel to carry with us.’
The monk put down his writing board and sipped some water. ‘Ah, but it’s always there. You do carry it still, don’t you? It’s risen to the surface here in your story.’
Shanti stared out from the gathering shadows under the awning to the limpid evening beyond. The monk could see that her lips trembled. She softly said, ‘Vijay never resolved the conflicts that raged within him—the differences between the man he wished to be and the man he believed it was his duty to become.’
Days drifted by. I shrunk into myself. Having arrived at the end of her ideas for dealing with Appa, Eelar-amma tried speaking directly to the court Brahmans without Appa’s knowledge, trying to reason with them, pleading with them, even bribing them into ending the foul plan. But they hesitated to contravene their prime benefactor whom they also feared. And when Appa heard about Eelar-amma’s scheming, he knocked her across the face with such force that she could take only liquids for two days. ‘Anyway,’ she told me, defeated, her left eye still swollen shut, ‘the Brahmans won’t go against him. They’ll do whatever he asks and is willing to pay richly for.’ She turned her good eye upon Narsimha who sat hunched and disconsolate near me, the three of us convened in my favoured dark thicket of the garden where I went to brood. ‘Your father, Pundit Behrishva—he’s convinced that this act will accrue great gifts to himself: good karma, divine favours.’
‘They all fear retribution,’ whispered Narsimha, as though the words fell from his lips without his intending to speak them.
Eelar-amma’s eye narrowed and her face tightened into an unreadable expression, a defensive ingathering at hearing her husband criticized. ‘It’s not that Raja Ilujara punitively seeks to destroy any individual—’
‘—Disposing of his own daughter in this way—this isn’t to destroy her?’ erupted Narsimha. Eelar-amma’s eyelid fluttered with discomposure, while Narsimha grew thoughtful. ‘One puts themselves at risk by standing out against the rest. But even the raja couldn’t punish a united body of Brahmans. He’d have to listen if there were a unanimous dissent.’
‘But I’ve spoken even to your father and several others—none will defect from his position of support.’
‘With all respect, Rani Eelar, you aren’t the right person to—’
‘—Can you help her?’ breathed Eelar-amma, her expression breaking at once into desperation.
‘I’ll not live to see this travesty play out,’ Narsimha declared. ‘I’ll not be cowed by any raja’s madness.’
Narsimha stayed with me throughout that day. Most of that time he sat quietly hunched over, his lips pulled down in consternation, sweat rolling down the sides of his face as his mind almost visibly boiled with concentration and rage. We sat a few spans apart from the others, on a broad tree swing near the edge of the Women’s Garden, pillows haphazardly arranged between us, absorbing our perspiration as it dropped from our chins and rolled down our thighs. Alone together this way for most of the afternoon, neither of us spoke; neither of us ate; neither of us moved apart.
‘This whole thing is barbaric!’ Narsimha exclaimed at last. ‘It’s an abomination, I tell you!’ Others heard every word he spoke, yet no one involved themselves in our conversation, perhaps because all were hoping someone would come to my rescue. ‘In the name of the Vedas and everything I’ve devoted myself to, I won’t allow his hideous impulse to corrupt the notion of puja and sacrifice and all that is godly.’
But I wasn’t listening. I was trying to figure out how to let go of the world and prepare myself to die. I didn’t want to hear Narsimha’s indignation, for it only distracted me from the one real course left to me: to embrace my end. And so, as he spoke, I stared at the ruddy evening hues bathing the gardens and ponds beyond the arbour, taking in everything I knew of the world. I filled my ears with the buzz of the insects, willed their vibrations to penetrate my flesh. I wished to dissolve into the crisp light. I breathed in the perfume of jasmine blossoms and held my breath. I was thinking that by holding this sweet fragrance within me, by trying to hold onto the worldly beauty of this moment, I was betraying the transience of my existence, and that if I were brave, I should exhale. But I did not.
Then Narsimha took my hand, surreptitiously and suddenly, under the pillows that lay between us. I gasped and, for a moment, I thought it was his purpose to help me exhale, to help me let go of my impulse to live. But when I looked at him, the way his dark skin and eyes glowed in the red evening, his vitality invaded me. He stared at the pillow, underneath which his hand gripped mine. His agitation was acute.
And that was the first moment I saw clearly. Illusion was torn. All the things I thought myself to be—first-ranked daughter of Illara House, first rajkumari of Virinara, supreme rajkumari of the Shrangi, barren, lame, useless and covered in shame—all the limiting impositions of this life became transparent to me. And I stepped through. I knew not where I might go—but I’d broken out of a dungeon in my mind. It was the first time since I was a girl that I glimpsed myself as whole, possessed of my own self. It was the first uncertain and tripping step of what would become a lifelong journey.
In that moment I knew that Narsimha loved me, had loved me for years and I loved him too. I knew that our love came only from between us, born of no duty to anything beyond us. We’d been friendly since youth, with a shared interest in poetry and drama. And though he’d recently finished his Brahmacharya, put off marriage, came often to the Palace to enjoy the hospitality and company, it hadn’t occurred to me, until this moment, that any such thing between us was possible. I gripped his hand tightly and looked him in the eye with a strength I’d never felt before. And I knew that I shouldn’t have to die for Appa’s shame—that I should live in Narsimha’s love.
‘There is a way,’ he mouthed, not even a whisper, but I understood every word. ‘I can dissuade them from this madness. Trust me. And when it’s over, I’ll marry you. If they cannot accept us, we’ll run far from here and make our own way.’
I breathed freely and deeply—each breath, sweetened with jasmine, brazen with sunset, filled with the promise of life and love.
But more days passed and nothing happened. Soon a fortnight was gone. I was beside myself. I turned back against myself, cursed myself for letting Narsimha’s hope get inside me. That moment of clarity I’d experienced in the garden, I despaired it was but a trick of the light and the senses. I pushed away all thoughts of him, forced myself to return to my practice of letting go of life.
And then again Narsimha appeared at the Palace and requested an audience. ‘The winds are turning,’ he said when I was seated across him in an open chamber, our attendants arrayed at a distance around the perimeter. ‘I’ve gathered the Brahmans and incited them to refuse the raja’s desire for a human sacrifice. Many of them agreed from the start that the whole business is worse than vulgar, but the more powerful families have much to lose by opposing your father—and much to gain by going along—they’re my opposition. Yet I’m able to rally many of them on the side of sense and compassion. We’re a voice now, a force.’
‘What about your father? If you can convince him, there will be no further opposition.’
‘He won’t speak to me.’
‘What?’
‘He’s offended that I’d oppose him. I spoke back to him. I told him exactly what I think of his corruption!’
‘He’s Appa’s most favoured of the Brahmans, Narsimha. I’m lost.’
‘No!’ Instinctively he reached for my hand, but stopped himself when he remembered the attendants looking on; this time there were no pillows to hide under. ‘Listen, if I can’t convince them, then I’ll find a way to steal you away at the last moment, should it come to that.’
‘Narsimha, your family! You would become outcaste!’
‘What’s it to me to belong to a caste of thugs and vultures, if that’s what they should prove themselves to be? The world is big and wide, and we’ll find our own way.’
More days passed. Another fortnight. Or was it a month? This time, I began to hear rumours from the women of Illara House and the Palace servants: Brahmans were coming to the Palace, one by one and in groups, taking audiences with Appa, employing different tactics to dissuade him from murdering his daughter. Some stoked the fear of negative karma in his heart; others made purely moral arguments about murder or about the sanctity of the filial bond; others cajoled that he’d appear as a backward raja to those more powerful nations in the east.
Narsimha had told me that when he’d organized as many Brahmans as he could on the basis of morality and sentiment, he next resorted to kindling fires of petty jealousies between them. During the in-fighting and jostling that ensued, Brahmanical careers were made and broken. Including the career of Narsimha’s own father.
Appa publicly humiliated Pundit Behrishva, calling him a jackal, claiming that his greed and drive for power had led Appa astray. ‘How dare you push such poor advice, Panditji? Was it your intention to make a mockery of my reign?’ he charged. It made no difference that the pundit protested, saying that the whole matter had been Appa’s idea from the start, and that he, as a dutiful priest, was merely supporting his sovereign. ‘Quiet, scoundrel! Nearly every other Brahman in Dandavrut is against you and your trickery. How can I trust you, henceforth?’ Appa appropriated Pundit Behrishva’s villages and perquisites, and distributed them among others. The priest was ruined.
But Appa made no public pronouncements or retractions about me. I had little reliable information as the wheels of politics turned. All the while, I sat cowering in the Palace, uncertain where my fate lay, until at last the night of the Nralungu Moon arrived. And went. And nothing happened. There was no great sacrifice—no sacrifice at all. The tremor of the whole ordeal just died away, dropped, forgotten. No one spoke of it. It was as though an earth-shattering storm had blown through, ripping up homes and gardens and forests and fields, carrying off whole families, rearranging the very mountains of the landscape, and then, when it was over, everyone just carried on, accepting the new conformations of their world without wonder or comment.
But that was how it always went with Raja Ilujara. Though the common people knew him only as a just and wise leader, those close to the Palace were accustomed to his bouts of madness and the silences that followed in their wake.
‘You do make out my father as a fool!’ Bhikku Laxman blurted, defensively.
Shanti looked at him evenly, neither scorn nor apology upon her face. ‘I speak of the man who conspired towards my ultimate demise, my friend, the man who would’ve murdered me with his own hand for his own gain.’
The monk’s face reddened, but he was nonplussed.
‘Bhikku, these are the things of the world as they happened to me. You must let go your illusions of the past and deal with what was. I tell you what your father did, and what your brother did. It’s as difficult to hear as it is to tell, and you must come to terms with it in your own way. But that isn’t my struggle; that’s yours.’
After a moment of dour silence, the monk dropped his stylus onto his writing board. He set the writing board aside. Then he stood up and walked out into the descending evening.
Two days after the Nralungu Moon, when I was still learning to trust again in my own life, Narsimha came to me, as he’d promised. He told me that his father had disowned and disinherited him. Cast him out.
‘Let’s run away to Dindora,’ I begged.
‘Give me a few days to pull together what I can, rather than we go out into the world with no means. Despite Appa’s ill will, there are others who will help me—I’ve at least one uncle who isn’t unhappy to see Appa ruined, and other allies as well. I think I can get us passage on a boat. Amma will give me some jewellery to trade. Getting to see her is the difficult part. This will be easier if you and I aren’t seen as conspiring together.’
I remained quietly in the Palace until Narsimha sent for me, while he stayed at the Buddhist sangha in Port Behrut, calling in his favours and working out his plan. After three days he sent word that he’d procured passage for the two of us on a merchant vessel bound for Dindora seaport; I should get out from the Palace in any way possible, and meet him at Birdbath Island in two days time.
But the following day Narsimha fell ill and sent word again for me to remain at the Palace. ‘Our trip will be delayed by a few days,’ he wrote. ‘But don’t despair for I’ll soon enough be well. Boats bound for Dindora are not so infrequent. Don’t come to me in my illness, for the enemies I’ve made shouldn’t be given any sign of our plans.’
He sent another note the next day, but it was the same. Only later I heard from the monks that he’d gone to bed ill one night, soon after his evening meal. He was weaker when he awoke, and grew weaker day by day. He might’ve eaten some tainted food, but I’d never know for certain what the matter was. The day after he sent his final missive, he was gone. Dead. Just like that. Everything left incomplete.
I was bereft.
I was lost.
This pounding flood of terror and intrigue and love and hope had rushed in and carried me away upon its roiling surges and then deposited me elsewhere, on some unknown island, all alone. I hardly knew what to do with myself, with the cursed life that still coursed through me. My will was gone. I stopped eating. But even my fast was without will and when at last Eelar-amma and Palli forced food and drink into me, I swallowed reflexively. If not for the affection of Vijay, who now came to me freely, if not for the mothers and sisters of Illara House and Gold House, I shouldn’t have survived, though I survived as a mere ghost.
Eventually, I returned again to Birdbath Island, aimlessly wandering by myself, visiting the Speakers Green, reading, gazing at the stars, passing the empty days. I summoned Guruji and began to look towards the future once more only under his tutelage. As according to his original wish, Appa never laid eyes on me again, nor did he ever hear my name spoken. I grew smaller and smaller in the life of the Palace, taking solace in poetry and drama, in meditation and philosophy.
‘Ah, so that’s it, then,’ the old man said, his eyes cast sorrowfully downward. The heat of midday had risen and the forest droned with insects. ‘I remember the day of my brother’s death,’ he continued. ‘I also remember Appaji’s grief . . . his consuming rage.’
‘The other day you walked away because you felt I’d insulted your father. But I know what it is to contain the many shards of another person, to have their presence in your heart tear at your loyalties, even to your deepest principles.’
‘You broke with your father—or he broke with you—very cleanly. Though your wound might’ve bled profusely, it didn’t fester. You’ve looked back on your father with righteous anger—but separate from him. His poison doesn’t taint you.’ Bhikku Laxman paused. ‘It isn’t so for me. I was a boy when all the pieces began to shatter and all I knew was to clutch at the fragments as the whole. No one ever told me the full story of what transpired between Appa and my brother—nor did I ask. But when my mother took my brother’s side and then Appa seemed so abandoned, so alone in his despair . . . I stuck by him. He was a doting father to me. I miss him still.’
7
Appa had inherited a prosperous country when grandfather left us, and though Appa wasn’t as long-lived as his father, he did succeed in making Virinara more prosperous still. Throughout my youth, our wealth seemed to multiply every year. We thrived in Dandavrut and throughout the villages of our countryside. New forestlands were constantly being cleared. New fields were regularly sown for prized varieties of rice, several types of pulses, eggplants, drumsticks, and a dozen other vegetables and herbs. Each year, scores of new trees were propagated across expanding villages: mango, lemon, kokum, coconut, banana, jackfruit and others, flourishing to such a degree that many seemed to take root by themselves, seeping like the forward edge of a Virina tide into the surrounding jungle. Our pepper and cotton production also soared, those ordinary commodities so dearly relished by the Romans, augmenting our base of trade.
But eventually Appa’s ministers advised him that production must increase yet faster, if it was to keep ahead of the burgeoning population and still meet the growing demand for trade. ‘If you can manage the waterways and land cultivation adequately,’ they said, ‘with a strategy that will anticipate future generations, the Virina can continue to flourish, and you will be hailed as the greatest raja of Virina history.’ So, taking the aid of the most far-sighted people in the land, Appa began to plan for what would be his life’s most ambitious project: the expansion of cultivated lands to nearly double their size. The project would take years to complete in anticipation of decades of growth.
